Monday, July 1, 2013

Homemade Battering Ram: Warlord Dark Age of Camelot

A
battering ram is a siege engine originating in ancient times and designed to
break open the masonry walls of fortifications or splinter their wooden gates.

In its
simplest form, a battering ram is just a large, heavy log carried by several
people and propelled with force against an obstacle; the ram would be
sufficient to damage the target if the log was massive enough and/or it were
moved quickly enough (that is, if it had enough momentum). Later rams encased
the log in an arrow-proof, fire-resistant canopy mounted on wheels. Inside the
canopy, the log was swung from suspensory chains or ropes.

Rams
proved effective weapons of war because old fashioned wall-building materials
such as stone and brick were weak in tension, and therefore prone to cracking
when impacted with sufficient force. With repeated blows, the cracks would grow
steadily until a hole was created. Eventually, a breach would appear in the
fabric of the wall—enabling armed attackers to force their way through the gap
and engage the inhabitants of the citadel.

The
introduction in the later Middle Ages of siege cannons, which harnessed the
explosive power of gunpowder to propel weighty stone or iron balls against
fortified obstacles, spelled the end of battering rams and other traditional
siege weapons. Much smaller, hand-held versions of battering rams are still
used today, however, by law enforcement officers and military personnel to bash
open locked doors.

Design

During the
Iron Age, in the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean, the battering ram's log
was slung from a wheeled frame by ropes or chains so that it could be made more
massive and be more easily bashed against its target. Frequently, the ram's
point would be reinforced with a metal head or cap while vulnerable parts of
the shaft were bound with strengthening metal bands. Vitruvius details in his
text On Architecture that Ceras the Carthaginian was the first to make a ram
with a wooden base with wheels and a wooden superstructure. Within this the ram
was hung so that it could be used against the wall. This structure moved so
slowly, however, that he called it the testudo (the Latin word for
"tortoise").[1]

Another
type of ram was one that maintained the normal shape and structure, but the
support beams were instead made of saplings that were lashed together. The
frame was then covered in hides as normal to defend from fire. The only solid
beam present was the actual ram that was hung from the frame. The frame itself
was so light that it could be carried on the shoulders of the men transporting
the ram, and the same men could beat the ram against the wall when they reached
it.[2]

Many
battering rams possessed curved or slanted wooden roofs and side-screens
covered in protective materials, usually fresh wet hides, presumably skinned
from animals eaten by the besiegers. These hide canopies stopped the ram from
being set on fire. They also safeguarded the operators of the ram against arrow
and spear volleys launched from above.

A
well-known image of an Assyrian battering ram depicts how sophisticated
attacking and defensive practices had become by the 9th century BC. The
defenders of a town wall are trying to set the ram alight with torches and have
also put a chain under it. The attackers are trying to pull on the chain to
free the ram, while the aforementioned wet hides on the canopy provide
protection against the flames.

The first
confirmed employment of rams in the Occident happened in 427 BC, when the
Spartans besieged Plataea.[3] The first use of rams within the actual
Mediterranean Basin, featuring in this case the simultaneous employment of
siege towers to shelter the rammers from attack, occurred on the island of
Sicily in 409 BC, at the Selinus siege.[4]

Defenders
manning castles, forts or bastions would sometimes try to foil battering rams
by dropping obstacles in front of the ram, such as a large sack of sawdust,
just before the ram's head struck a wall or gate, or by using grappling hooks
to immobilize the ram's log. Alternatively, the ram could be set ablaze, doused
in fire-heated sand, pounded by boulders dropped from battlements or invested
by a rapid sally of troops.

Some
battering rams were not slung from ropes or chains, but were instead supported
by rollers. This allowed the ram to achieve a greater speed before striking its
target, making it more destructive. Such a ram, as used by Alexander the Great,
is described by the writer Vitruvius.

Alternatives
to the battering ram included the drill, the sapper's mouse, the pick and the
siege hook. These devices were smaller than a ram and could be used in confined
spaces.

Famous
sieges

Battering
rams had an important effect on the evolution of defensive walls, which were
constructed ever more ingeniously in a bid to nullify the effects of siege
engines. Historical instances of the usage of battering rams in sieges of major
cities include:

The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans,

The Crusades,

The fall of Rome,

The siege of Constantinople.

There is a
popular myth in Gloucester that the famous children's rhyme, Humpty Dumpty, is
about a battering ram used in the siege of Gloucester in 1643, during the
English Civil War. However, the story is almost certainly untrue; during the
siege, which lasted only one month, no battering rams were used, although many
cannons were. The idea seems to have originated in a spoof history essay by
Professor David Daube written for The Oxford Magazine in 1956, which was widely
believed despite obvious improbabilities (e.g., planning to cross River Severn
by running the ram down a hill at speed, although the river is about 30 m (100
feet) wide at this point).

A capped
ram is a battering ram that has an accessory at the head (usually made of iron
or steel and sometimes punningly shaped into the head and horns of an ovine
ram) to do more damage to a building. It was much more effective at destroying
enemy walls and buildings than an uncapped ram but was heavier to carry.

Use in
mining

Pliny the
Elder in his Naturalis Historia describes a battering ram used in mining, where
hard rock needed to be broken down to release the ore. The pole possessed a
metal tip weighing 150 pounds, so the whole device will have weighed at least
twice as much in order to preserve its balance. Whether or not it was supported
by being suspended with ropes from a frame remains unknown, but very likely
given its total weight. Such devices were used during coal mining in the 19th
century in Great Britain before the widespread use of explosives, which were
expensive and dangerous to use in practice.

Modern use

Battering
rams still have a use in modern times. SWAT teams and other police forces often
employ small, one-man or two-man metal rams for forcing open locked portals or
effecting a door breaching. Modern battering rams sometimes incorporate a
cylinder, along the length of which a piston fires automatically upon striking
a hard object—thus enhancing the momentum of the impact significantly. -From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia